Donna Moss, in different ways
by Mistress Hershey
Summary: AUs. Vignettes. Part Four: Donnatella Feldman Black Widow.
1. Unbroken Road

**Disclaimer:** They're not mine. Really. They're Aaron Sorkin's, if you can believe that. I'm serious!

**Spoilers:** Maybe mild ones for _Dead Irish Poets_.

_And what do most women lead, lives of noisy fulfillment?_ – Susan, Desperate Housewives

**Unbroken Road**

**By Lizka**

It's one-fifty in the morning, and she can't sleep. She doesn't know why.

Ask anyone who knows Mrs. Dr. Steven Feldman and they'll tell you that she is a fulfilled woman. Does she not, after all, have a handsome, rich and successful husband? Is she not just a few credits short of acquiring her teacher's license? If more people knew; they'd sing about how - in just eight months - she'll take on the most rewarding task of all: motherhood.

Yes, Donna has it all.

She's tall and slim, and her hair is naturally blonde. Her skin is the envy of every woman in her book club. She has her education, she'll have her child, she'll have her career, and despite political differences, she most certainly has her man. They joke (she jokes) that between his conservative sensibilities and her liberal compassion, they'll raise a balanced and well-rounded, fair-haired child to set the world on fire. They laugh (she laughs) that maybe their unborn child should run for President in forty years.

She has everything she could possibly want, and there's absolutely no reason why Donna should lie awake at night. She's content. Her future lies ahead of her like an unbroken road, stretching to the horizon. She and Steve will have three or four children. She'll have a distinguished career teaching the Honours English program that her own teacher, Molly Marillo, had set up. Steve will be one of the most respected doctors in Madison, and when they're both retired, they'll go somewhere warm where he can play golf all day and she can work on the book that she always wanted to write. Their house will go to their eldest (a boy for sure) and their grandkids will visit them during the holidays.

Donna can see all this in her mind's eye and wonders why it doesn't make her as happy as it should. It's not that she doesn't want her future children or grandchildren, because she wants as many as she can afford. She knows that teaching is a noble profession and that her former teachers are proud of her. She's even sure of her love for Steve, even though it's becoming more and more difficult to remember the reasons why.

It's not something that she can explain, at least not coherently. It doesn't exactly feel like something's missing, but it does somehow feel like there should be something more.

It doesn't make sense, not even in privacy of her mind.

_Click_.

It is now two AM. If she doesn't go to sleep now, she won't be able to catch President Bartlet's speech. Pulling her blankets around her, she tries to think of other things, like what to name her child – "Josiah" sounded good – and how she'll grab the first important-looking White House staffer and ask exactly why she was a Canadian for a month.

Citizenship issues aside, Donna does have it all.

She'll have her education.

She'll have her job.

She'll have her child.

She'll have her man for the next fifty years or so.

She's happy.

Really.


	2. Bartlet For America

**Disclaimer:** Aaron's.

**Spoilers:** _In The Shadow of Two Gunmen._

**Notes:** I'll be continuing the story started in _Unbroken Road_ at a later date. Also: mighty big props to Rowing Goddess, who made my story her bitch.

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**Bartlet For America**

**By Lizka**

Sitting on her chair, surrounded by paper and envelopes, Donna let herself wallow in self-pity. Everyone she knew was back in Wisconsin. She was running out of money. She had no (paying) job, no boyfriend, and apparently, no intestinal fortitude.

She had chickened out. No assistant job for her.

Oh, sure, she could say to herself that it was a dumb idea in the first place, that it never would have worked, that she could have been escorted out of campaign headquarters by the Secret Service, but one thing was abundantly clear:

Donnatella Moss was a coward.

She started to clear a small space on the table where she had been stuffing envelopes. After all, if she was going to bang her head against a hard surface, it shouldn't be padded with a thick layer of memos.

_Bang._ Wimp.

_Bang._ Scaredy-cat.

_Bang._ Wuss.

_Bang._ She couldn't think of another name to call herself, but it's the sentiment that counts and she really needed to stop now because her head was starting to hurt.

As she rested her sore head against the cool surface of the desk, she said, "My kingdom for a bottle of acetylsalicylic acid."

"Here you go," a vaguely familiar voice said as Donna felt something (hopefully some blessed acetylsalicylic acid) settle gently next to her head.

"Thank you. You're a godsend." Donna popped two tablets into her mouth, took a sip of her bottled water, and swallowed. Ah, she felt marginally better already, placebo effect or no. Closing the bottle of aspirin, she turned to bestow further thanks upon her mysterious benefactor –

- who turned out to be none other than the highly amused Abigail Bartlet.

Donna felt the blood rush up to her face and knew that she must be horribly red. Damn alabaster skin, damn headache, damn _everything_.

"Thank you, ma'am," Donna managed to get out as she hurriedly pushed the childproof bottle back into the hands of the formidable governor's formidable wife. "It's been a long day and I'm really tired, not that everyone else isn't tired but, Dr. – I mean, Mrs. –," Donna stopped herself and took a breath. There, see, don't brains work much better with an oxygen supply? "I'm sorry; do you prefer Dr. or Mrs.?"

For a split second, the older woman's face showed surprise, sadness, and regret. Then it was gone, replaced with a perfect politician's smile mixed with just a hint of wry humour. "Mrs. Bartlet will do just fine."

"Thank you, Mrs. Bartlet."

She stood, waiting for Mrs. Bartlet to make her good-byes. Future First Ladies did not often stop to talk with volunteers, and if they did, it was rarely for very long.

Mrs. Bartlet, Possible Future First Lady, did not move. "Are you a med student?" she asked, "It's not everyday that I come across someone who knows the proper name for aspirin. Well, except for most of my friends, my colleagues, and my middle daughter, but most people in the campaign can't even pronounce acetylsalicylic acid."

Donna flushed. Again. This was becoming surreal. "No, I'm not a med student. I just dated one for a while."

Mrs. Bartlet winced. "Bad breakup?"

"Excuse me?"

"I have three daughters. I can spot a bad breakup a mile away."

Donna tried to stop herself. Really she did, but it had been such a long day and it was a bad breakup and _dammit_, she had just driven from Wisconsin to New Hampshire and that's not something that she does everyday. So, somehow, the whole sordid story came flooding out. She was pretty sure that the Governor's wife had tricked her in some way, but Donna couldn't point out exactly how.

"So you worked as an office manager for how many years, Donna?"

"Two, ma'am, and the year before that I worked as a receptionist."

Mrs. Bartlet nodded, took a look at a copy of Donna's résumé (how did she get a hold of that?), and stood.

"All right then. I'm going to give this to Mrs. Landingham, and she'll check it out. Afterwards, you'll be interviewed, and someone will run a background check. Security reasons, you understand. If everything goes well, Mrs. Landingham will set up a meeting with you and fill you in on your responsibilities."

"Ma'am, I –,"

"Now I'm going to leave you to your work. Have a good night, Donna, and I'll see you in the morning."

With a smile, Mrs. Bartlet turned and walked away. Donna continued to stuff envelopes, as she wondered exactly what had just happened.


	3. Shoes

**Disclaimer:** Aaron's. And John Wells' too, I suppose -hack.

**Author's Notes:** Yet another AU. Also, as always, props to Rowing Goddess for beta-ing.

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**Shoes**

**_By Lizka_**

Carefully lifting one long leg, Donna studied the effect of that particular shoe with her dress. Hmm. Not bad. She lifted the hem of her skirt carefully, put her right foot down and raised her left leg in a stork-like movement.

Definitely not.

As Donna carefully put the first pair into the "maybe" pile and the second pair in the "no-way-in-hell" pile, she decided – not for the first time – that men had it much easier than women when it came to wardrobe, especially for formal functions. After all, what (straight) man complained that another man was wearing the same tux as he?

Women, on the other hand, had to make sure that the dress they wore would not be repeated in the room. No lines could show, it had to fit just right, and if the skirt was long, the length had to correlate with the height of the shoes to avoid any embarrassing accidents.

Which brought her to her current dilemma. After an unfortunate incident that afternoon involving her music stand, her cat, and the entire works of Jane Austen, the left shoe of the pair that she had purchased specifically for this event was decidedly heel-less, leaving her now to scour her closet for a suitable replacement. Closed toe or open toe? Flats or stillettoes? Straps, no straps, pointed toe, square toe, patent leather or satin, these were the things that she had to consider. She was sure that most men did not have to make choices like these.

No straight, non-cross-dressing men, anyway.

God, she hoped that this one wasn't gay. One would think that after Julliard and encountering countless smart, funny, well-groomed and polite men that Donna would be more adept at separating the gay from the simply metrosexual, but no. She was just as clueless now as she was when Jay, her first boyfriend in New York, came out. She still talked to Jay. He was very happy; living with a very nice man named Adam, and doing off-Broadway shows. She hoped that she would be invited to the civil union ceremony.

Please, _please_, let this one not be gay. Really, the last thing she needed after moving to DC (where she knew no one), joining the National Symphony Orchestra (where she was definitely low on the totem pole as the new piccolo player), and moving into her new apartment (which she still hadn't furnished fully) would be to find out that her newest boyfriend was coming out of the closet.

He was funny. He was smart. He was cute. He was also a bit of a geek, but it worked for him. _Great_ butt. He worked for the government, but in this town, it was tough to find a man who didn't. It didn't really matter that he worked incredibly long hours; she wasn't looking for a commitment.

Now all she needed to do was find a pair of shoes.

Someone knocked on the door, interrupting Donna's careful selection.

"It's me," a voice called out from beyond the door.

Damn. He was on time.

Lifting the hem of her dress, she walked barefoot to let in her date. "Hey Sam," she said brightly as she ushered him inside. "No international crises held you up?"

"Nope," Sam grinned. He had a great smile. "We got lucky. Hey, are you ready yet?"

"Not yet," Donna answered. "I still have to pick out a pair of shoes." She paused. "You wouldn't have any suggestions, would you? This is my first time at the White House, after all, and I want to do things right."

She smiled inwardly at his look of panic.

"Uh, no. I don't know how women decide these things." Sam shrugged helplessly.

"That's too bad. Just give me a minute to decide, OK?" Donna turned and walked back into her bedroom, careful not to let Sam see her grin.

No shoe sense. _Excellent._

"Are the black pumps all right?"


	4. Curve in the Road

**Disclaimer:** Still Sorkin's. Still Wells'. Still not mine.

**Note:** Continues from _Unbroken Road_. Props to **Rowing Goddess.**

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**A Curve in the Road**

**By Lizka**

They were complaining again. Words spilled out of the two men at a rapid pace, insults and sly remarks flowing out of them in such a way that it was clear that they had done this before. She was starting to lose her patience. Donna clenched her left hand on her steering wheel, and turned up her car's volume with her right. "Any requests?" she asked, interrupting the two politicos as they debated who the better Jew was. It sounded like an old argument. They needed to stop, for the sake of her sanity and for the sake of the United States government – she was three words away from strangling both men with their own ties, and she didn't want to give birth to her first child while in prison.

Frankly, she was starting to regret offering to give these guys a ride. They were supposed to be brilliant, capable men who practically ran the government. It was their own fault that they missed their motorcade. What was more, it sounded like it was something that had happened before, in Indianapolis, maybe. She was surprised that democracy hadn't yet crumbled, and there was still running water.

She didn't know when she opened her mouth. Afterward, it took a little while for her to realize that they had fallen silent. She may have yelled. She may have been cutting. There might have been a fair amount of snarling on her part as well, not to mention a one-handed-strangling gesture. She was still driving the car, after all.

Now they were staring at her with wide-eyed looks of fear, not unlike the one her youngest niece gets when confronted with a spider.

She could see it now: Donnatella Feldman – Black Widow.

She sighed, and tried to put the men at ease before they sicced the Secret Service on her rapidly inflating ass. "Hormones," she said by way of apology. "I'm pregnant." Even before the word fully left her mouth, her mouth stretched into such a wide grin that she thought the corner of her lips would touch her ears. She still wasn't used to saying it aloud, let alone to two strangers that she literally (well, sort of) picked up off the side of the road.

"Congratulations," said the man beside her. He had obviously learned not to annoy her further, which was wise of him. His face broke into a huge grin. It was a great grin. If she wasn't already married, she'd be bugging her friends to see if he liked her.

"How far along are you?" asked the man in the backseat, still cautious but genuinely interested.

"One month." This was much better. No bickering, no heated debates about the intelligence of Rob Ritchie, no I-can-out-Jew-you contests; just simple, honest talk that would in no way cause her overtaxed hormones to flare up. Their conversation had moved from pregnancy (Toby had a surprising amount of knowledge about human gestation), to music (Josh loved the Doobie Brothers, and had memorized way too many Van Morrison songs), to books. Toby was, unsurprisingly, quite vehement about his opinions on the state of modern literature, as well as the lack of spelling and punctuation skills that plagued most of the populace.

"It's not ridiculous to demand precision in language. One word can alter the nuance of an entire statement, and in some cases, change the meaning all together. Yet today, very few teachers bother to properly correct spelling and grammar, or to teach proper punctuation!"

"It's a crisis," Donna agreed as they engaged into a friendly debate about the educational crisis in America. They pulled up to an intersection as the light turned red. From the amount of fidgeting going on in the passenger side seat, she could tell that Josh was getting antsy. "Relax. We'll get there on time," she said as she watched the pedestrians go by.

Woman with a baby stroller. Teenagers with backpacks. Man with groceries. A couple, both in baseball caps and sunglasses. A blind man with his dog. The couple stopped in front of the car, kissed, and walked passed arm in arm, and Donna caught a glimpse of the man's face. She knew that man in the blue baseball cap; she knew that the wedding ring on his finger was a match to her own.

The light turned green, and Donna hit the gas.

"You're both lawyers, right?"

The two men nodded as they looked at her anxiously as she began to speed past the other cars.

"Do you know anyone who does divorce?"


End file.
